21 (Eco)Visualizations for Energy Consumption Awareness

Energy consumption grows more and more concern, and with the popularity of Mr. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, just about everyone is at the very least, semi-aware of energy consumption. These 21 visualizations and designs were created to increase that awareness, so that maybe, a few more people will turn off the light when they leave a room. I think Peter Crabb said it best (which I borrowed from Tiffany Holmes’ ecoviz paper):

[P]eople do not use energy; they use devices and products. How devices and products are designed determines how we use them, which in turn determines rates of energy depletion.

Environmental Dashboards

The growing availability of energy data has lent itself nicely to dashboards that let viewers keep track of how much energy is consumed at any given time. They are perpetuated by the idea of living buildings and devices.

7,000 Oaks

Using the tree metaphor to mentally link energy consumption to the physical world.

The CARMA site now provides a number of widgets that people can embed on social network sites to help raise awareness, encourage interaction, and spread the data – http://carma.org/widgets/. Finally, all the data is freely available and can also be re-used on other web applications via our API – http://carma.org/api/

The CARMA site now provides a number of widgets that people can embed on social network sites to help raise awareness, encourage interaction, and spread the data – http://carma.org/widgets/. Finally, all the data is freely available and can also be re-used on other web applications via our API – http://carma.org/api/